Legal Question in Family Law in Virginia
Sale of Home
My niece currently has leukemia. She also had a drug problem due to her reliance on pain pills, etc. Due to her unstableness, she left the home and her three children and after four years cohabitated with another person and bore another child. She is now trying to correct some of her problems. Under VA law, is she entitled to half of the sale of the home she no longer lives in. The children live with her husband's mother?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Sale of Home
If your niece and her husband are still married, they probably own the home jointly, and neither could alone sell or otherwise affect the title of the property. If they are divorced, and nothing was said about the home, or if they originally took the home without right of survivorship, either can try to sell their partial interest, but neither is likely to find anyone to buy a partial interest.
This is all by way of saying that the owners of the home decide who gets the proceeds of sale, or if they cannot, the court will, either as part of a divorce suit or as a separate action quaintly known as partition.